I Bought Andy Warhol (Harry Abrams, 2003) is a slim new volume by California private art dealer and art market chronicler Richard Polsky, a frequent contributor to artnet.com. The premise of the book is to weave the search for the Holy Grail, i.e. the hunt for the perfect Warhol painting, into a memoir of life as an art dealer. However, the problem is that Polsky is a not very interesting, small time dealer in pursuit of a not very interesting, minor Warhol. In fact, for those actively trading pictures for a livelihood, the whole affair of Polsky’s book/life is rather depressing. This is a person who spends his time eking out a living by operating a dinky gallery in a town, San Francisco, with a negligible market for contemporary art, and then struggling to makes ends meet as a private dealer-and often times not managing at that. This is not to maintain that’s its not a noble cause to struggle to survive doing something that one is passionate about; rather, it is simply that this story never really measures up as a story.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting factual tidbits and observations and a few engaging anecdotes. Is there enough here to constitute an engrossing autobiography? No. However, that little fact certainly has done nothing to diminish the flood of memoirs these days from everyone and their grandmother, and grandmother’s grandmother. The gratifying segments include Warhol’s auction record during his lifetime: $385,000 in 1986 for 200 One Dollar Bills. Another perceptive thought was that Warhol’s is the most democratic of all markets for artists as his paintings are the most widely collected and traded works of art in the world, and name the greatest recognized among the general public save for Picasso’s. There are some humorous stories spun regarding a food fight that culminated in a soiled Rucha painting, and an $800,000 check gone missing from an absent minded gallerist. Lastly, in the worthwhile reminiscences department, is an encounter with the imperious Vincent Freemont, the exclusive sales agent for the Warhol estate. The tale involved a demonic spinning chair episode as Freemont twirled Polsky around at the warehouse where the estate’s Warhols are stored so as to shield him from seeing the extent of the cache of paintings still existing which fact is as guarded as a state secret.
Back to the grim nature of the tome is an unentertaining, gratuitous chapter about two wealthy art patrons that invited Polsky to lunch. When the $300 bill showed up, they ambushed the destitute dealer with a set of dice supplied by the waiter to be thrown to determine who would get stuck with the check. Besides Polsky, dear readers, it was ultimately we that were stuck with the bill. Recommended reading are two books referenced in I Bought Andy Warhol :Duveen (S.N. Behrman, Glenn Lowry, Introduction, Little Bookroom, 2003 Paperback) ,an autobiography of perhaps the greatest dealer who ever dealt, that brazenly borrowed millions in the early 1900’s as a young man (probably hundreds of millions in today’s dollars) to speculate in art. And, Bob Colacello’s Holly Terror (HarperCollins, 1990) a day to day account of Warhol’s factory life and madcap social goings-on in the 1970’s, utterly elucidating if you can get past Colacello’s claiming responsibility for a good portion of Warhol’s output and social connections. Example: “As I recall, I took mine (a photograph of a room service set-up with a new camera) seconds before Andy took his.”
UPTICK: SHoP SHOP
SHoP is an appropriate name for the architectural firm ShoP Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, a team composed of two husband and wife couples and a twin brother of one of the husband’s. SHoP is apropos inasmuch as the word connotes a cottage entrepreneurial enterprise, in this case with a very innovative approach to the staid world of building buildings. Sharples Holden Pasquarelli have won design awards from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which entails a commission to build an academic building (upcoming); a feasibility study from Columbia University resulted in a commission to build a School of the Arts building; and, a First Place/Commissioned Young Architect’s Award Competition from The Museum of Modern Art, which resulted in a 12,000 square foot dunescape for summer relaxation at PS 1 Museum in Queens, NY. SHoP built the first infrastructural element to be installed into the vicinity of the former World Trade Center site since the tragic events of September 11th. The bridge reconnected the residents of Battery Park City and the various businesses of the World Financial Center to the rest of Lower Manhattan.
The printed matter supplied by SHoP immediately sets them apart as is apparent in their profile, which employs a flow chart to depict the organization of the firm. Aside from obvious backgrounds of the principals (lots of degrees from Columbia University), the schematic chart illustrates experience in the worlds of finance, marketing, structural engineering, and art history. The key here is finance and marketing which becomes palpable in the project known as “The Porter House” referencing a choice cut of meat for a residential structure in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Rather than continuing to passively design OPP’s (Other People’s Projects) the SHoP group brought a property site on the market to the attention of a former client that is also a developer so they could actively take a stake in the enterprise. What resulted was a renovation and conversion of a six story warehouse to a condominium with a new four story structure plopped on top and cantilevering over the lower neighboring buildings to the south. Hence, the financing and marketing expertise came into play as Sharples Holden Pasquarelli found the building, helped cement the financing, designed the job; and, in addition, put together a snazzy book to market the whole shebang. The prices of the units were raised several times before they ultimately sold out-all prior to the completion of construction. Not bad for a firm established in 1996 with a group comprised of academics from Columbia (a few still teaching there, among other top-flight institutions).
Many architects pay lip service to new systems of practice that employ digital expertise in the way of three dimensional computer form generation. Stephen Holl claims that despite his firm’s mastery over new design technologies, all his work emanates from traditional water colors by the hand, as good design should-an oxymoron if ever there was. Not only does SHoP look beyond past architectural practice to the realms of automotive and aeronautical engineering, they do so with a view towards using the computer to often reduce construction budgets. The façade of The Porter House used a custom fabricated metal panel system that originated on a desk top and ended up as a kit of custom parts accompanied by a set of instructions akin to Lego or a model airplane kit. A Duchampian Readymade building to go for the streets of New York City or anywhere for that matter. A building that functions as an actual Camera Obscura for a park in Greenport, New York was the fist structure not only designed but entirely assembled with laser-cut aluminum and steel components using digital files directly extracted from the computer model. Rarely do you find an artistic undertaking with such an acute business sense and forward thinking technological stance. Sign me up as a client.
Kenny Schachter